Chapter 2 A TELEPHONE PARTY

However much the rest of the year may drag, the spring vacation always ignores the speed limit. What with dress-making and shopping, and going over one's bureau drawers and closets in anticipation of the spring cleaning, and trying to do the things one has been postponing till this week of leisure, and taking advantage of all the pleasures that start up like mushrooms, twenty-four hours in a day are all too few. When Priscilla dropped in on Peggy to suggest going out into the country for wild flowers, the Monday afternoon that closed the holiday season, Peggy hesitated.

"I'd love it. I don't feel that spring is really here until I have picked a few violets and spring beauties. But I was thinking of going to see Mary Donaldson."

"Why, is anything the matter?" Priscilla asked.

Peggy stared, "Matter! You know that since that attack of inflammatory rheumatism she hasn't walked-"

"But I meant anything new."

"O, there's nothing new, not as far as I know. I haven't been in to see Mary since-O, dear, I'm afraid it's been an age."

"I only meant," explained Priscilla reasonably, "that if Mary's no worse off than she has been for the last year and a half, there's no especial point in taking to-day to go to see her. You could go any afternoon."

"I could," owned Peggy with a significant inflection.

"And it's such a perfect day to go after wild flowers."

Peggy looked from the window. The blue sky seemed to smile an invitation. Priscilla's argument all at once appeared unanswerable.

"Yes, isn't it lovely!" Peggy drew a long breath. "Too lovely to stay indoors. I'll go to see Mary some stormy afternoon when she needs cheering up."

And now that her decision was made, the thought of Mary Donaldson passed completely from Peggy's mind. She had never been particularly intimate with this class-mate, and had it not been for Mary's illness it is unlikely that the two girls would have seen much of each other after high school days. But the winter of Peggy's Freshman year, an attack of rheumatism had left Mary seriously crippled. Though now she was able to be dressed and to hobble from her bed to a chair by the window, getting downstairs was too difficult a process to be considered, except on very especial occasions. With all the yearnings for life and joy that characterize the normal girl, Mary was condemned to vibrate between her bed and chair.

It was not strange that with all her sympathy Peggy had found it difficult to see much of her invalid friend. The demands made by the war upon the scanty leisure of a college student left her little time she could call her own. She had worked making surgical dressings under the Red Cross, and had given much time to collecting and mending worn garments for the destitute children of Belgium and France. She had subscribed for a bond in each of the Government loans, and to pay for these with her own earnings had required hard work and careful financing. On the whole, though Peggy was sorry not to have seen more of Mary Donaldson, her conscience acquitted her of neglect.

The season was advanced and the girls had no difficulty in filling their baskets with the early arrivals among the wild flowers, and as their baskets filled, they feasted their eyes on the myriad indeterminate shades of a spring landscape, and drank in the exhilarating odors of damp earth, warmed by the April sun. When Peggy's wrist-watch warned them it was time to start for home, they went reluctantly, with an unreasonable feeling that in returning to town they were leaving the spring behind them.

At their transfer point a sign in a drug store window caught Amy's eye. "Ice cream soda with fresh fruit," she read impressively. "I wondered what it was I wanted. I've lost a pound and a half since vacation began, so I dare to risk one."

"I haven't been buying sodas, because I needed the money for something else," said Peggy. "But this is the last day of vacation and I believe I'll celebrate."

They filed in and gave their orders. Peggy had just taken the first sip of a ravishing concoction, whose formula would have given a dyspeptic heart-failure, when at the opposite counter she spied a stout, middle-aged woman who was regarding her with savage intentness. Her features were familiar, in spite of a look of hostility Peggy was not accustomed to see on the faces that looked in her direction.

For some minutes Peggy was frankly puzzled. Not till she was finishing her soda did she remember where she had seen that heavy, lowering face before. But with the recollection, she slipped from her stool and crossed to the opposite side of the room.

"I've been trying to think where I've seen you before, but now I remember. You're the Miss Potts who takes care of Mary Donaldson, aren't you?"

Rather ungraciously Miss Potts admitted her identity. She was not a trained nurse, for in Mary's case skilled hands were no longer necessary. Miss Potts was big and strong and kind of heart, though at the moment her expression was far from suggesting the latter characteristic. A little puzzled by the woman's manner, Peggy continued, "I've been wanting to see Mary for ever so long. How is she?"

"Well, she ain't doing very well, and no wonder. Old folks get kind of used to the way things are in this world, and it doesn't surprise 'em none to be forgotten. But it's sort of hard on the young."

Peggy flushed hotly. She realized that Miss Potts' disagreeable manner was a deliberate expression of resentment. "I'm sorry that I haven't been able to see more of Mary this last year," she said with gentle dignity, "but I've been very busy, and it's such a long way over here."

"I s'pose it's a long way to your telephone, too."

"Telephone!" Peggy repeated. She looked at Miss Potts so blankly that Mary's caretaker had no alternative but to explain.

"Her pa had it put in for a surprise. It's right beside her bed, and the little thing it stands on moves 'round, so she can talk without any trouble. He thought it would be a comfort to her, for she could chat with all her friends, and sort of keep up with things."

"Why, yes," said Peggy, feeling uncomfortable. "I should think she'd get lots of fun out of it." She was remembering that Mary had called her up-it was weeks or months, or was it fully a year before-to tell her about the new telephone. There had been an eagerness in Mary's voice that she remembered vividly. Peggy had agreed that it was "splendid," without realizing just what this link with the outside world would mean to a girl shut out from so much.

Miss Potts indulged in an unmusical laugh. "Oh, yes," she said. "She gets lots of fun. Every now and then she gets a call. There's so many new girls on the telephone exchanges nowadays, that they're bound to give her number every little while. And then she tells 'em it's the wrong number and rings off."

Peggy's face was a study. "Do you mean that she-that no one-"

The aggressiveness suddenly disappeared from Miss Potts' manner. Her eyes filled with tears.

"It's the heart-breakingest thing I ever want to see," she cried. "She was so hopeful at first. As soon as that telephone was put in, she called up everybody she knew, to tell 'em about it. And then she'd lie there smiling, watching that phone, as if it was something out of a fairy book and was going to bring her all kinds of happiness."

Peggy's imagination was a vivid one. As Miss Potts spoke, she could almost see Mary's smiling, expectant face. A pang of sympathy stabbed her tender heart.

"The very first time that telephone rang it was somebody that wanted the butcher; and the second time, a girl, who was coming over to spend the afternoon with her, rang up to say her aunt was in town and she was going to the matinée instead. I don't think Mary ever felt the same about her phone after that start-out. When it rang, she looked kind of scared, as if she was afraid she was going to hear something disappointing."

"But surely," Peggy exclaimed, "she must have lots of calls from her friends. I-why, I know I haven't called very often, but that was because I was always hoping to get time to go over to see her." There was such genuine distress in her voice that Miss Potts was visibly melted.

"It's a busy world," she said, "for young folks and old folks, too, and I guess on the whole it's lucky it is so easy for us to forget. But all the same," she ended, with a shake of her head, "it's pretty hard on the ones who get forgotten."

The clerk brought out the prescription for which Miss Potts had been waiting, and Peggy rejoined her friends. For a moment she considered sending her flowers to Mary, but a fear that to Miss Potts this might seem an effort to evade a more exacting expression of sympathy led her to relinquish her purpose. Her crest-fallen manner revealed that something was wrong, and as they left the drug store her friends resentfully demanded an explanation.

"Peggy, what was that woman saying to you?" Priscilla was bristling like a mother hen who sees one of her brood attacked.

In a few words Peggy explained. Her three listeners exchanged conscience-stricken glances.

"It seems rather mean that you should be the one to be scolded," said Amy, "when you have gone to see Mary oftener than all the three of us together."

"That isn't saying much," Peggy stated gloomily. "I haven't been near her for months."

"But you haven't had time," cried Ruth, slipping her hand through her friend's arm.

"No, I think I really haven't," Peggy said frankly. "But I certainly have had time to go to the telephone." Then suddenly her face brightened. "I know what we'll do, girls; we'll give her a telephone party."

"A telephone party," Amy repeated. "What do you mean by that?" The car for which they were waiting came along before Peggy could answer, and she finished her explanation hanging to a strap, while her three companions, similarly supported and swaying violently with each jerk of the car, listened absorbedly.

"College opens to-morrow, and the first day is never so very busy, so we'll call Mary up every hour. My hour will be between nine and ten. Priscilla, you take the hour between ten and eleven; and Amy, you can have the next one. I think we'd better omit the hour between twelve and one, for she'll probably be eating luncheon then. Ruth, you may call between one and two."

"But you said every hour, Peggy. Don't you think it would be rather over-doing it to call twice in one day?"

"I'm going to get hold of some of the other girls who were in Mary's class in high school, Elinor Hewitt, and Anna Joyce, and Blanche Eastabrook-"

"She's in New York."

"Well, Marian O'Neil isn't. And I'll see Aimee Dubois at college and tell her about it. Mary's telephone is going to work overtime to make up for its long idleness."

"What I don't understand," said Priscilla, "is if Mary was so lonely, why didn't she call us up?"

"I can understand that easy enough," replied Peggy. "She called us up to tell us she had a phone, and after that, it was our move."

"And I suppose," suggested Amy, "that there isn't a great deal to talk about, when you don't get out of an upstairs room from one month to another."

"I suppose not," Priscilla acknowledged. Everything considered, it was a rather crest-fallen quartette of girls who returned from their afternoon's outing.

It was just half past nine next day when Mary Donaldson's telephone rang. "I'm not too early, am I?" said a cheery voice.

Mary, who had taken up the receiver with the air of uncertainty to which Miss Potts had referred, uttered a joyful exclamation. "Why, it's Peggy Raymond!"

"Yes, it's Peggy. I wanted to tell you about something perfectly killing that happened to Amy the other day." Peggy had made up her mind to ignore the months of silence. Explanations would not help matters, for nothing could explain away the fact that in the whirl and rush of their over-full lives they had, for the time being, quite forgotten Mary.

The story of Amy's impromptu dinner party proved as entertaining as Peggy had anticipated. Mary Donaldson laughed as she had not laughed for months. And in the next room Miss Potts, listening, made strange grimaces that seemed only distantly related to smiles. When the story was finished, Mary had some questions to ask. "Who are the Careys? There used to be a Carey girl in school-"

"I'm pretty sure they aren't related to her. They come from some place in New York and they've lived in our neighborhood less than a year. And do you know, Mary, we think Amy must have made quite an impression on the brother-Bob. He's called on her twice since, and he's asked her to go to the Glee Club concert."

"He has!" Romance dies hard in the heart of a girl. Poor Mary, shut away from contact with young life, was thrilled by the suggestion of an incipient love-story. "Is he nice looking?" she asked eagerly.

"Well, I've not met him yet, but I've noticed him passing several times, and I thought he was quite handsome. And Hildegarde is an awfully stylish girl, though I'd hardly call her pretty."

In ten minutes Peggy announced that she must go to a history lecture and rang off. She was smiling as she went to class, and wishing she could be an unseen listener to the conversations scheduled to take place in Mary's room every hour in the day.

As Peggy had promised, the bell of Mary's telephone worked over-time. The Friendly Terrace girls were supplemented by former school-mates in sufficient numbers to keep up the excitement till half past eight that evening. Most of the girls, whose memories Peggy had undertaken to jolt, were conscience-stricken when they realized how they had neglected Mary. And they readily fell in with Peggy's suggestion.

"Even if we can't get over there very often," urged Peggy, "we can use the telephone. Five minutes talk every few days will make Mary feel that she's in touch with us still. It doesn't seem to me I could bear feeling forgotten." Peggy did not realize that, even with Mary's disability, she would have made herself the center of some circle; and in her failure to understand that Mary's rather colorless personality was in part responsible for what had happened, Peggy was the more severe upon herself for what now seemed to her inexplicable and inexcusable neglect.

Thanks to the sudden activity of Peggy's conscience, Mary Donaldson heard more outside news in one day than she had heard in the three months previous. And as the trouble with most young people is want of thought, rather than want of heart, few of the girls were satisfied with chatting five or ten minutes over the telephone. They promised to come to see her soon. They offered to lend her books or mail her magazines. One girl suggested that she would bring over some of her victrola records for Mary to hear, and another informed her that as soon as the lilies of the valley were out she should have a cluster. All at once Mary Donaldson's friends were remembering her in earnest.

When Marian O'Neil rang off at twenty minutes of nine, Mary hesitated a moment and then called Peggy Raymond. And Peggy who was giving her studies that half-hearted attention customary on the first day after vacation, whether the student is in the primary grade or a college Junior, came running downstairs when Dick shouted her name.

"Hello-Hello-Why, Mary!" The pleasure in her tone was unmistakable, and the shut-in, two miles away, thrilled responsively.

"Peggy, I just wanted to tell you before I went to sleep that I've had such a lovely day."

"Have you, dear? I'm glad. What happened?"

The question took the guileless Mary aback. "I thought perhaps you knew something about it. My telephone has been ringing all day. It was queer if it was only a coincidence, for some girls called me up that I haven't heard from for years."

"Must have been what they call a brain wave," suggested Peggy, audaciously.

"Well, anyway, it was nice. I've heard so many things and talked with so many people that I feel as if I'd been to a party."

"If that's all, Mary, I'll prophesy there'll be just as nice days coming as this."

"Oh, do you think so, Peggy! Well, it's my bed time now, so I won't talk any longer. Good-night."

"Good-night!" And as Peggy hung up the receiver, she reflected that she had never done justice to the possibilities of the telephone.

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